


these flowers

by colloquialrhapsodist



Category: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Fluff, Romance, Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 08:16:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4214658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colloquialrhapsodist/pseuds/colloquialrhapsodist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>... you remember them, right?</i>
</p>
<p>a small collection of fanille moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these flowers

**Author's Note:**

> Threw this together to celebrate today - same-sex marriage being officially legalized in the USA. My gay fingers couldn't not do something.

Vanille is ten years old and in love with beads. Glass beads, wooden beads, beads that have miniature flowers and things painted on them. She likes to roll great handfuls of them in her palms and feel them all clacking against each other in a light, staccato little song, giggling at their cool feel in her calloused fingers. She spends her time weaving together thin strings of rope and letting the beads fall, one at a time, a slow waterfall of clicks.

She makes bracelets for everyone in the class, boy or girl or otherwise, kissing them each on their pudgy cheeks. (Vanille had never been able to keep her hands to herself. They like to jump out at the darnedest times, the silly flapping things, to pet hair or stroke an arm. Her body is so full of jittery energy that she’s got to share it with everyone.) Most are happy enough to accept this gift, even as they go back to lessons about war and fighting and monsters living in the sky. Vanille hums to tune out the lessons. She doesn’t want to hear them and make herself scared.

“You’ll never be picked to be a l’Cie,” one says, snapping his wrist away when she tries to tie her newest creation around it. “You’re no good at _important_ stuff.”

“Isn’t this stuff important, too? What’s the point of beating… C-cocoon” – she can never say the name without a little tremor, and squares her shoulders – “if we can’t all be happy at the same time?”

“Stupid girl,” he says. “Stop lying to yourself. We’ll never be happy until that thing’s destroyed. Like Anima says.”

“But I don’t _want_ to go around destroying things,” Vanille says tearfully, and he makes a scornful noise.

“Hey!” They both jump when a fist slams down on the table – a bronzed fist, belonging to a fierce little girl with dark hair and eyes. She directs her words to Vanille. “Is he bothering you?”

Vanille shakes her head. The girl turns and narrows her eyes at the boy.

“You better not be making an arse of yourself to her.” She juts her chin out. “It’d do you some good to lighten up.”

Vanille giggles a little nervously at the bad word, and the boy sulks away, maybe to tell the teacher. Before the girl can take her fist away, Vanille’s nimble fingers slide around it, tying around the bracelet she made for the boy. “Thanks, Fang,” she chirps. “But he really wasn’t bothering me, honest.”

Fang draws her hand back to examine the bracelet from all angles, and arches an eyebrow skeptically. “Looked like he was,” she grunts, and then, “You’re great just the way you are, Vanille. Love this, by the way.”

“I think I’m done with beads for a while,” Vanille says. “I want to try flowers next. Do you want to play outside later?”

Fang gives her a rare smile.

 

* * *

 

“Fang?”

“Hm?”

“Who do you think… your parents are?”

Vanille is fifteen years old and in love with flowers. Every day, she goes outside and buries herself in the tall grass, wondering if it could get long enough to wrap around her like a comforting blanket and she’d smell all naturey forever and ever. Today, she’s weaving flower stems together, inhaling all the familiar scents of the flowers and of Fang.

Fang thinks for a while, glancing off towards the sunset. “Dunno,” she says eventually. “Never really thought about it before.”

It’s custom for the children of Oerba to be collectively raised by all the adults. Anima insists they are all one big happy family, and that it is their guardian. They take the phrase _it takes a village to raise a child_ very seriously, especially if they’re all to grow up to be strong l’Cie. Birth parents are kept a secret, to ensure the children grow close to _everyone_ in the community.

“Maybe you’re the chief’s daughter!”

Fang chuckles.

“Well, you could be! Everybody loves you. Everybody knows that you’re going to be the greatest l’Cie _ever._ ”

“Don’t much care if _everybody_ loves me, being honest.” Fang gives her a little nudge with her shoulder, and even though Vanille giggles like she always does, she looks away so Fang doesn’t see her pink cheeks and shy smile. Her shoulder still seems to tingle a little bit with the touch.

“What about you?” Fang asks. “You ever think about your parents?”

“A little. Once in a while.” Vanille pauses on her busywork, staring down at the grass. She’s acutely aware of Fang’s eyes on the back of her neck – maybe a little narrowed in that worried expression she’s grown accustomed to. Then she perks up, slapping a smile on her face, “But I’ve got the whole village, so it’s no big deal!”

“Vanille,” Fang says quietly, her voice rumbling out of her chest, resting a hand on the shoulder that still tingles. Vanille looks away, her heart fluttering again in that nice-but-strange way. “It’s okay to want to know.”

Vanille looks down at her bare feet, toes digging into the grass.

“I know you try hard to be there for everyone.” Fang curls her fingers lightly around Vanille’s shoulder. “I see you try so hard, smiling at everybody and giving them little things. But it’s…” She clears her throat, a little awkwardly. “… it’s okay to be lonely.”

Vanille peeks up at her through her eyelashes.

“Hey, even I get lonely sometimes,” Fang says defensively.

“You?” Vanille says, in some surprise. “But you’re so brave and strong!”

“You don’t see me when we’re _not_ together,” Fang says, and a real smile twitches onto Vanille’s face, and even Fang’s lips turn up at one corner.

“Then we’ll just have to be together all the time,” Vanille announces, plopping the wreath of flowers onto Fang’s head. “So we’re never lonely!”

Bemused, Fang feels one of the petals between two fingers. “All right, but I’m no parent.”

“I’m not asking you to be _that_ ,” Vanille says.

“Then what _are_ you asking?”

There is a silence, and Vanille turns pink again. She’s not even sure what _she’s_ asking, either, but no one makes her feel the way Fang does.

“Your face matches your hair,” Fang murmurs, a half-grin spreading across her face.

“Just _be_ here,” Vanille says finally, and her silly, flappy hand reaching out to take Fang’s and lay their laced fingers on the grass. “Just – like this, see?”

“Like this, huh?” Fang laughs, and squeezes her hand. “I think I can do ‘this.’ ”

 

* * *

 

Vanille is nineteen years old and in love with the wind. She stands on a great precipice, watching the sun go down, dying the fields of Gran Pulse musky rose. The breeze plays with her hair, bringing every scent of home that she’s ever known along with it, tossing her curls and touching the drying tear tracks on her face. She takes in a deep, deep breath, and another smell joins the rest of them, closer to home than anything else.

“Hey,” Fang says quietly, approaching her from behind. “You feeling better?”

“Mmhm.” Vanille nods, but she doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t put on that too-bright face, because Fang would call her out in a second, and just quiets herself as Fang comes up next to her. “Thanks,” she adds, after a moment. “For… for earlier.”

“I know you don’t like confrontation.” Fang rests a hand on Vanille’s back, her fingers moving in tiny swirls.

“I needed it this time,” Vanille says. “I… I don’t want to keep lying to you, Fang. I just… I didn’t know how to say it.”

Fang doesn’t respond, but she thinks she hears her hum something, deep, deep in her throat, that contented rumble.

“It’s just…” Vanille sighs, thinking about her time on Cocoon, about the fast, hellish swirl her life has become, and there’s no direction to run in except forward.

“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Fang says. “Everything’s been difficult, and you’ve had to deal with this all alone, poor girl.”

“Fang – there’s something else.”

“Hm?”

Vanille glances down at the flowers, the ones that grew all over Oerba, thinking about how many times she ran her fingers through their stems and touched her nose to their petals. “I-I,” she stutters, “I… well… I think I’ve been… lying about something else, too.”

Fang is silent.

“I know what I want… you to be here… like,” Vanille says, the words coming out in a quick, flustered mess that she’s not even quite sure _what_ she said.

And abruptly, Fang starts laughing. Vanille turns her eyes on her, surprised.

“Silly,” Fang says eventually, bringing her hand down to thread her fingers through Vanille’s. “I’ve known for a long time. I was just waiting for you to say something.”

“So we can just…” Vanille squeezes Fang’s hand shyly. “… be? Like this?”

“I was thinking…” Fang shifts her weight towards her, and Vanille looks over, tipping her head back. They’re so close, but even so, Vanille can feel stars between them, warming them, the scent of Gran Pulse carried on the wind, the flowers swaying by their feet. She can hear the clink of beads as they shift, and Fang’s dark eyes are bright and shiny, like the beads. Her heart is in her throat, sputtering like a weak butterfly being carried by a strong breeze, but she knows the breeze will lead her to a good and warm place so there’s no fear, only surprise, only excitement.

“I was thinking… something more like this.”

Fang touches her lips to Vanille’s, and Vanille’s eyes slide closed. Her cheeks are wet again.

Vanille is a thousand years old and in love, and she’s always been in love.


End file.
